Hair Transplant Cost Reduction options: Hair restoration surgery makes sense as the succeeding step for people who desire a lasting solution to androgenic alopecia. However, a closer look at this incredible technology shows that getting a full, natural-looking head of hair requires a price. Hair transplant cost is generally expensive. The price can vary by thousands of dollars based on the method, the doctor, and the clinic. If you’re losing hair and want to undergo surgical hair transplantation, there are some ways to reduce the cost—but they don’t all turn out well.

Don’t allow your finances to take you down the ill-advised road of unrefined techniques, subpar clinics, and novice practitioners just to save a couple thousand dollars. Taking this action is counterproductive for long-term savings. Instead, look to the few valid hair transplant cost reduction options that would not compromise the quality of the work you end up with.

Valid Hair Transplant Cost Reduction Options

Saving money in a legitimate way means you don’t sacrifice your long-term results. Giving up the caliber of service and care for subpar treatment can reduce costs in the beginning, but could end up creating a long-term catastrophe. Three commonly practiced hair transplant cost reduction options offered by many clinics include:

The sliding scale (mostly practiced for strip surgeries)
Granting rights to your clinic to use your results for publications and marketing
Standby booking

The sliding scale is mostly practiced by strip surgery clinics (Not Dr U) a hair transplant cost reduction based on the number of grafts to be transplanted and could resemble something like this:

Hair Transplant Cost Reduction Options by Various Clinics - sliding scale example — outline template of typical hair transplant cost ranges – sliding scale is practiced by many strip surgery hair transplant clinics.

However, it is less often used at boutique practices (like DermHair Clinic) that choose, in the interest of the patient, to value quality of the result over quantity. Larger, mass output clinics that produce a higher number of surgeries are often able to afford the sliding scale discount. Moreover it is ill suited for genuine FUE practices like Dr U since the number of grafts done per day is fairly constant and not determined by the patients financial capacity.

The granting of rights to use result images is another hair transplant cost reduction option to cut costs at reputable clinics–even most smaller ones. In this case, the patient has to sign over the before/after photo and video documentation to the clinic so they can make commercial use of it to promote their hair transplant services. Losing hair and the having your surgery results disclosed to the public is not ideal, but you can modify your level of disclosure. For example, you can have the clinic blur your face and even distort your voice. You disclosing your results assists the clinic in obtaining future patients, thus they will usually negotiate a price reduction. You can also view this as helping others in your situation who would be encouraged to take action and solve their problem upon viewing your results.

Another great hair transplant cost reduction option is agreeing to standby status. This means you are willing to fill in a last-minute gap in the clinic’s scheduling, which may occur if someone else suddenly cancels his/her surgery. By accepting your appointment on short notice and filling this gap, the clinic may offer you a hair transplant cost reduction. Of course, whether or not your clinic of choice offers a standby discount should be discussed up front.

At Dr U Hair Clinic, we offer the disclosure agreement and the standby discount to help you reduce your cost.

Hair Transplant Cost Reduction Option TO AVOID

Only use the following methods of saving money if you want to have a repair procedure later on. Cutting costs in these misguided ways ironically increases costs over the long run. Furthermore, it brings unnecessary emotional turmoil to an already grievous struggle. Do not use these tactics:

Medical tourism for the sake of cost saving should be avoided
A cheaper procedure likes scalp reduction or hair flap surgery
Choosing a clinic that is known for quantity over quality (they produce transplants like a factory)
Settling for a novice surgeon

Regardless of whether you get the price reduction from third-world conditions, a subpar technology, artless implementation, or inexperience, these tactics all have a common theme: they sacrifice the quality of your hair restoration treatment. And this will negatively affect the final result. As if losing hair to begin with wasn’t terrible enough. Substandard service is a big cause of failed outcomes, which need to be corrected later with a second or sometimes a third operation. Hair transplant costs much more in the end by cutting the price in a way that’s counterproductive.